


some strange eruption

by apollonian



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Post-Avengers (2012), not really a fix-it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:42:43
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,340
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037784
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollonian/pseuds/apollonian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Phil woke up in a silent, sterile white room.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some strange eruption

           Phil woke up in a silent, sterile white room. He blinked, eyes adjusting to the harsh fluorescent light, and tried to sit up, wincing slightly as the movement jarred the wires connected to his chest. He pulled at them, wincing when they came off, and looked at the monitor next to him. It was surprisingly quiet, although it seemed to be in working order – there was certainly something it was monitoring, although Phil didn’t know what. He had no experience in reading them despite all of the time he spent in the medical ward.

           He wondered why he was in a separate room, and what he had done this time to end up in medical. He was certainly no Clint Barton, but he had had his fair share of injuries over the years. A quick glance around the room offered no clues to his situation, and neither did a cursory examination of his body. Everything seemed to be in working order, as far as he could tell.

           Shrugging, he slipped out of the bed. He seemed to be fine, so he could now go searching for answers. It was rare that he couldn’t remember anything that had happened before and during an op, but stranger things had happened. The hospital gown fluttered unflatteringly around him, and he sighed internally. Hospital gowns looked horrible on everyone, and he really did not want to go wandering around SHIELD HQ nearly naked. He took a closer look around the room, spotting a closet built into the wall, nearly invisible as it was painted the same bright white as the rest of the room. He slowly walked over to it, opening the door and seeing a flash of dark fabric, with a splash of – was that _blood_? He recognized the suit – it was one of his favorites, he had gotten it tailored nearly ten years ago – but the blood was a shock. Had he been shot? Frowning, he lifted up the thin gown and took a look at his chest, but it was smooth, no gunshot, no stab wound, nothing.

           He reached in and carefully lifted the suit off the rack. Inside the jacket he could see one of his favorite shirts – white with faint blue pinstripes that brought out his eyes, according to Clint. It, too, had old, dried blood staining the front. He touched the stain warily, wondering why no one had bothered to clean the suit, or even throw it away: it would be nearly impossible to get that stain out, now that it had dried into the fabric. He didn’t recall being shot (he didn’t recall much of anything), so had another agent bled on him?

           Laying the suit across the bed, he scanned the closet once more, coming up with his shoes and his belt, but no answers to his questions. Seeing no other option, he quickly stripped off the gown and slid on the clothes, noting that there was blood all across the back of the suit as well. He felt uncomfortable in that suit, an unknown person’s blood all over it, but well. Desperate times called for desperate measures. He slid on the shoes, wiggling his sockless toes inside them, and taking one last look at the empty room, he walked towards the door. The door was ajar, enough that Phil could see no signs of life outside, no footsteps and no voices. He was getting a sick feeling in his gut; what had happened at HQ that could result in no one being there? Was the op he couldn’t remember somehow related to the eerie silence? Had something or someone finally managed to hit SHIELD hard enough to reduce it to nothing? They had been dealing with increasingly stranger things – Norse gods landing in the middle of New Mexico, American legends being uncovered in the ice, magical glowing cubes – it was certainly a possibility that SHIELD had finally faced something it couldn’t handle.

           Quelling the increasing apprehensiveness, he slipped out of the room, glancing at both sides of the hallway. Both were empty, so on a whim he turned left, silently walking down. The hallway had no other doors except his, and no identifying signs that were a fixture on all the levels of HQ. Was he not at HQ, then? He had assumed, initially, that he was, that was were most patients with serious injuries ended up – the Helicarrier’s medical ward wasn’t big enough yet to support many patients at a time, and he had a tendency to attract wounds on the bigger side. But no – the architecture of the hallway was the same as that of HQ’s, despite the lack of identifying signs. He felt a bit reassured – SHIELD did have many secret passages and hidden bunkers that he was unaware of, after all, and no one till date had ever managed to map all of them. Clint had probably come close – he had been industriously going through all of them when he and Phil had been called up to the Helicarrier’s first flight, and there they had stayed, until – until what?

           Phil’s memory was a blank after that; he could not, for the love of god, recall anything very specific after waking up with Clint in his quarters (as usual), getting dressed, ignoring Clint’s pleas of “just _five_ minutes more, c’mon, Phil,” (as usual), scarfing down a scone and a coffee, kissing Clint once and going to his office (as usual). What the hell had happened after that? He racked his brain again, coming up with nothing, and that did not do anything to calm the increasingly sour feeling in his gut.

            He kept on moving and soon reached an unmarked stairwell. Climbing up the stairs carefully, he passed through a couple of floors, each as blank and unhelpful as the one he had woken up on. The third one he stopped at, though, was more promising – he heard quiet voices echoing through the hallways. He slipped out into the hallway carefully, breathing an internal sigh of relief when he saw the sign designating the floor “Level 7 only,” with a pink post-it note adding “And that means you, Barton.”

            He’d recognize Nick’s surprisingly untidy scrawl anywhere, and it was a comforting sign that he was still in SHIELD HQ, albeit on a floor he hadn’t visited yet (and Clint had tried to, apparently). That wasn’t such a big surprise – he’d only been promoted up to the newly formed Level 7 a few weeks before the mess with the Tesseract started, he hadn’t had much time to go exploring.

           He walked past the first few doors, noticing they were locked, but suddenly stopped when he saw Nick – and Maria, and Jasper, huddled over a desk through the small window in one of the doors. There was a half-finished bottle of whiskey – the good kind, the one Maria stashed under her desk – and piles of papers scattered around untidily. The people didn’t look much better than the room itself – all three had deep dark circles, their mouths lined and tired.

           Phil frowned, the unease from earlier coming back with a vengeance. What the _actual hell_ had happened while he was out? How long had he been out? Where were the doctors, the nurses, the rest of the agents? He had too many questions and not enough answers, and that never, ever boded well.

           He raised a hand to grasp at the handle of the door – and watched it pass right through. Confused, he tried to knock, and his hand went through the door, as if it were made of nothing at all.

           As terror crept up his gut and knotted his stomach, he closed his eyes and tried to step through the door. A chill passed over him and when he opened his eyes, he was inside the room, and none of his friends had noticed anything at all.

           Well, _shit,_ Phil thought to himself as his mind jumped to the first and least comforting explanation.

           He’d never been a fan of ghost stories.

**Author's Note:**

> The title is from Act I, Scene I of Hamlet. I found the beginning of this in my drafts, and since I hadn't touched it for nearly a year, I decided to give it some sort of ending (which hopefully works well). I'm posting this at 3:10 am, so if you see any errors, please feel free to point them out!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Cover for 'some strange eruption'](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1327600) by [lucyycx](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucyycx/pseuds/lucyycx)




End file.
